Conventional harvesting machines have been used with limited success to harvest certain types of fruit (e.g., stone fruit, such as peaches, nectarines, plums, etc.). For example, mechanical shakers have been used to harvest various crops (e.g., citrus, olives, etc.), and operate by grabbing the tree and shaking it until the fruit falls from the tree to a catch frame placed below the tree. Some of the fruit on the tree may fall several feet, resulting in bruising and wounds to the fruit. For instance, tree fruit (e.g., stone fruit) are grown a substantial distance above the ground and would fall several feet when knocked off of the tree. Such mechanical shakers have been used extensively in the agricultural industry for decades.
Some conventional row harvesters utilize spindles having rigid radiating arms, the spindles of which oscillate to remove fruit by shaking action. However, because the arms are rigid, active rotation of the spindles may cause drag and tree damage as the harvester moves along the trees. Thus, the spindles of conventional harvesters of this type are passively—not actively—rotated. An example of a conventional row harvester having passive spindles is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,484,487. The passively rotating arms of these machines knock fruit off of trees or bushes as the harvester moves along the row and the spindle arms contact the tree or bush limbs and the fruit. The fruit then falls to a collection area (e.g., a catch frame) below the spindle arms. Like the mechanical shakers, the row harvesters cause fruit to fall a substantial distance (e.g., 3 to 15 feet), which can bruise and wound the fruit.
Certain fruits (e.g., stone fruit) are still primarily harvested by hand because of the risk that the fruit will be bruised by automated row harvesters or shakers. Crops that are harvested by hand are very expensive to farm. In the case of cannery peaches the cost of production is so high that acres are declining and product is coming from overseas where labor is cheaper. It is estimated that seventy percent of the aforementioned costs are hand labor, thus any invention to reduce labor would be of value to the farmer and would preserve production. Thus, there is a need for an automated harvesting system that can harvest tree fruit such that they are protected from long falls and bruising during harvesting.